After the war, I had nightmares, I couldn't
sleep, couldn't digest normal food, but also my mind. The Army doctor suggested I write in the form
of a diary and put it away and forget about it so I could start a new life. Fortunately, I was invited to England - Lady
Copeland's home - I was able to spend every morning writing down my experiences
from 1939 through 1945. I was still having nightmares and having problems with
my body; I would wake up in the middle of the night throwing grenades standing
up on my bed, but it wasn't a grenade, it was a side lamp. I wrote my diary as a therapy for myself. I
was reliving it, but I knew it was good for me. Watch
Julian talking about PTSD, writing
therapy, and publishing his diary.

As
U.S. forces withdraw from parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban is making gains in
several areas of the country. The Afghan police and army are slowly giving way,
despite the United States spending 13 years and tens of billions of dollars
training those forces. When the United States completes its withdrawal from
ground combat at the end of this year, this unfavorable trend will undoubtedly
accelerate – that is, if the Afghan security forces don't collapse altogether,
as did similarly U.S.-trained Iraqi forces in that country. Thus, in the
longest war in American history, the U.S. military has failed to pacify
Afghanistan – as had the mighty British Empire three times in the 19th and
early 20th centuries and the Soviet superpower more recently in the 1980s. In
fact, an outside force has not pacified Afghanistan since Cyrus the Great of
Persia did it in ancient times.[more...]

The New York Times recently published the
home address of Police Officer Darren Wilson and his pregnant police officer
wife. Once they were publicly ridiculed for this reckless action, the paper
took down the story, but inexplicably left up the name of Darren Wilson’s
street address. Is The New York Times
trying to incite murder? How could any respectable journalist publish the
address of a police officer, knowing there are thousands of violent criminals
who'd like to kill him? Why would a newspaper purposely make Officer Wilson a
"marked man?" If someone kills Officer Wilson or his wife... or
mistakenly kills an entire family living in the home next door... isn’t The New York Times liable? [more...]

We're
asked to believe the addition of 5 million undocumented immigrants to an
overstressed job market will have no negative impact? According to some, the
unleashing of 5 million new undocumented immigrants into the workforce is
exactly the shot in the arm that we need. They will argue that many are already
in the system and the president has just brought them out of the shadows. The
fear of deportation has kept many from taking the kind of job that does require
legal paperwork. Now that that little item has been dispensed with, those
people can really do the kind of job that will secure their future. However,
that job already has the retiree in it - a college kid who needs it and now the
undocumented who wants it. The employer is salivating since his one job is in
high demand, meaning a wage that is nowhere near what it used to be. The law of
supply and demand has not been repealed and the addition, annually, of millions
of new college graduates and now millions of new undocumented immigrants prove
in the job market: the math doesn't work. [more...]

Westside
Community Schools have begun collecting student fingerprints for its school
lunch program. The school district has moved to a biometric identification
program, saying students will no longer have to use an ID card to buy lunch.
"Students lose their ID, they left it at home, it went through the washing
machine, there were all kinds of reasons why kids didn't have an ID and it took
a lot of time for them to fish it out of their pockets and holding their tray
at the same time," says Diane Zipay of Westside Nutrition Services.
"They never lose their finger." [more...]

Voting
fraud is (of course) illegal, but does it really happen here in the United
States? I always associated such devious acts as a civics nightmare only other
countries never seem capable of waking up to. Research suggests that voting
fraud is difficult to do in the US. If a person votes early, their name is
noted on the precinct registered and supplied to every polling place in the
parish. The names of those who vote on Election Day are checked off on the same
registers used on early voting dates. It greatly minimizes the potential
mishaps made when there are too many papers floating about. Hypothetically, any
attempt to vote twice would be caught immediately. [more...]